ATARI BYTES

Remember those great Atari 2600 games? Sure, they were fun to play, but didn't you ever wonder why they needed to call a plumber to take out Donkey Kong? What exactly Yar was seeking revenge against? What the Defender was defending? What was making those robots so Beserk? Me too! ATARI BYTES is a game review podcast like no other. On this show, we take a BYTE (get it?) out of a classic Atari 2600 game and see if the story within the game BYTES (now do you get it?) us back.

Remember those great Atari 2600 games? Sure, they were fun to play, but didn't you ever wonder why they sent a plumber to take out Donkey Kong? What Yar was seeking revenge against? What the Defender was defending or why those robots went Berserk? Me too! ATARI BYTES is a game review podcast like no other. We review not just the game play, but the STORY within these classic games. We take a BYTE out of the story (get it?) and see if that story BYTES us back (now do you get it?).

If you learn only one thing from ATARI BYTES episode 79, let it be this: Bears who live in crystal castles, shouldn't throw magic gems.

Wait. That's not it.

Actually, throwing magic gems is exactly what you should do in this 1983 Atari port of the proto-3D arcade adventure game CRYSTAL CASTLES. I mean, how else is Bentley Bear going to defeat the evil witch Berthilda? With an earnest heart-to-heart over steaming lattes?*

*I'm totaling waiting for someone to make a steaming latte adventure homebrew game.

Why is Bentley the only bear for this job? Did Fozzie, Yogi and Smokey say no? Is crystal really the ideal building material for a castle? So many questions...

In episode 77, we find out whether the Pac-Apple falls far from Ghost Tree. Then we gobble it up because....mmm, pac-apples.

We're playing JR. PAC-MAN, the 1984 son-of-a-classic-arcade icon. Does the game surpass it's predecessor? Or is it an embarrassing disappointment to the family? Then we dig into whether Jr. Pac has daddy issues or if he's his own Pac.

EPISODE 76: SPIDER-MAN swings in on a web to fill your earholes with sticky podcasting fluid. We're playing the 1982 Parker Brothers adventure in honor of SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING being in theaters right now. (As this episode drops.)

The Green Goblin has planted a super bomb in the high voltage tower atop a skyscraper. Will Spidey defuse the bombs in time? Will the Green Goblin get away? What exactly does the high voltage tower do? Who should get fired for signing off on the design choice of having a high voltage tower so accessible to people who want to scale it?

These questions and more will have you climbing the walls like...well, like you-know-who.

EPISODE 74: SKY JINKS. In this 1982 high-flying adventure from Activision, you need cat-like reflexes (though, ironically, felines are notoriously bad pilots. They prefer train travel.) to bank left and right around those pylons while dodging trees and hot-air balloons. Sure, you want to finish the time trials in record time, but, hey, don't let all those fast, high-altitude turns make you queasy or anything...